ARTICLES

DEAMS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR OUR LIVES

by Erin Bradley

"Hi there, this is around the 99th time I've left a message for you. It would be nice if you would pay attention to the messages I've been leaving!"

Could our dreams be messages for us that might actually have an impact on our daily lives? If that is the case, and it has been calculated that we spend roughly six years of our lives dreaming, then we have missed an awful lot of messages. Especially if we have simply brushed off our dreams as coming from too much chocolate or cheese the night before!

I believe that the dreams we have can and do affect how we live. Maybe it is time to consider that some of the dreams we have are to give us a hope for our future, to give us a glimpse into the destiny that God has planned for us.

In the state of sleep where your filters from life experience aren't preventing you from shutting out what you receive, what if you are actually able to access a realm where you can transform your life or someone else's? What if these dreams actually carry messages that could be applicable to finding solutions to situations in your own life? What if they are 'blueprints' for an invention, a plot for a book, a screenplay for a movie, or a business idea that is just waiting to be brought into this reality?

There are some famous dreamers through the ages whose dreams did some of those things…

If Frederich August Kekule von Stradonitz (1829-1896) had not fallen asleep and dreamt of 'atoms gamboling before his eyes' we would not have the scientific discovery of Molecules and the Benzene Structure. Otto Loewi (1873-1961) would never have won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1936 for his work on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses.

Madame C.J. Walker (1867-1919) would never have been the first female American self-made millionaire having dreamt of a product to cure a scalp infection. And where would we be without the numerous covers of 'Yesterday' penned by Paul McCartney who dreamt the tune the night before composing it?

Interestingly there are a couple of scientists thrown into that mix. Closer to home for my Kiwi (New Zealand) friends, Theophany speakers were discovered by Garth Murray in New Zealand. Garth was originally an air traffic controller diagnosed with a serious case of septicemia; this caused many complications, one of those being that he spent long hours sleeping. During that period of time he had an ongoing series of dreams where he was making speakers. He noted down the details from the dreams and literally began to build them from the dimensions he had received while sleeping.

Over the last century we have been encouraged to view our dreams as simply dealing with our soul – which is our mind, will and emotions, chemical imbalances in our body, medicines, or natural bodily functions and desires.

I would like to suggest to you, that by and large the psychoanalysts and the psychics have neglected another very important aspect to our dreams……….our spirit.

As believers we know that our spirit is the most important aspect of us. It is how we connect to God and what makes us who we are, and many of our dreams bypass our mind, which puts up barriers or filters related to our life experiences and the things that we have been taught, and go directly to our spirit.

Why do some dreams go directly to our spirit? Well our minds are a little tricky at times, and we all tend to have blind spots in our lives, so if the dream went via the pathway of our mind, it would probably be discarded or passed off as being from something that we ate.

Our spirit is the eternal part of us, hence the journey for our spirit is not a short one, and our spirit is always learning and expanding, depending on what we feed it.

Often these dreams can be like a form of counselling without the exorbitant fees! They are given to us to tweak things in our lives that we have hidden, ignored, or possibly justified.

If we allow them to, some of the dreams we receive will actually feed our spirit, transform our minds, bring healing to our bodies, and enable us to lead full and contented lives, propel us into our destiny and lead us into deeper relationship with God.

Do all our dreams come from God? No, they can come from 3 places

Our Soul (mind, will & emotions, self)

The Enemy (dark dreams, lies)

God (Holy Spirit dreams, truth)

So do we write off the ones that aren't from God? No! God can and will use these dreams to bring about His purposes in our life. As we seek Him for the interpretation of our dreams He will show us how He wants us to apply the dreams that we receive to our daily lives. It is important to recognise that we do need to apply them, as this will help us to move forward, particularly from those recurring dreams that can pester us and to remember that His heart is always for our good and His desire is for us to be transformed from glory to glory.

Our dreams can begin to position us for the destiny we were created for. They show us who we can become, and encourage us to be more than we currently are. They seep into our spirit, creating hope and can catapult us into our very own Grand Adventure. They push us to reach for the impossible that, with God, can become possible. There is no time or distance in the Spirit realm and often we can have dreams that pertain to this. In the natural realm they seem fantastic and improbable, but in the Spirit quite normal. The more we can see and believe, the more we can embrace and become!

Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of Kings is to search out a matter.

You belong to the Royal Family. You are a King and it is up to you to search out what your dreams mean. Once you start on this journey of recognising that your dreams are valid and important, you will be positioning yourself to receive more dream downloads, so that your relationship with the Father becomes deeper, and your faith richer as you begin to recognise the Father speaking to you in your very own dream language.

Prior to going to bed tonight, make sure you that have a pen and a journal beside your bed so that you can write down your dreams as soon as you wake up. As you lie down and go to sleep you can begin to look forward to receiving messages in the night from God - messages that could change your entire life. Sweet Dreams!

BIO

Erin Bradley is married to Andrew and lives in Auckland. She has been involved in Dream Interpretation for many years, and loves to share spiritual insights with those in the market place, meeting people where they're at. She heads up the ministry 'Dreams' and has done several stints of Dream Interpretation on Newstalk ZB Radio, an interview for NZ Women's Weekly and had a regular monthly slot on New Zealand's Radio Rhema with Pat Brittenden's 'Mornings' and at Wise Cicada Cafe in Newmarket, Auckland for 3 years. She holds a regular booth at the Auckland Night Market in Pakuranga. Find out more about her ministry at www.dreams.org.nz